Occupy Lego

You know something’s gone viral when it’s recreated in Lego. One person has decided to make a Lego diorama depicting a UC Davis Campus Police officer pepper-spraying the protestors.

By now you’ve probably seen the shocking images, which exploded on social networks recently. They’ve gotten a lot of people debating freedom of speech and the use of force not only in the U.S. but around the world.

Doctor Popular, a San Francisco-based “game designer, illustrator, tailor, and super nerd” created the Occupy News Bin in response the event. The scene consists of a group of Lego people protestors being sprayed by a cop, just as it happened in real life. He placed the diorama in an empty newspaper bin, which is supposed to contain the “Employment Guide.” It might be a bit of poetic justice, since many of the people in the Occupy movement are protesting the lack of jobs available in the U.S.

“Though I often disagree with the sentiments I hear by folks at Occupy Wall Street encampments,” he said, “I strongly support their rights to say them peacefully. So when I see so much footage of police using heavy handed tactics on non-violent protestors it not only makes me more sympathetic to OWS…it makes me feel sick.”

The good doctor built the scene out of Lego’s “City Sets,” which he says have a 2-to-1 ratio of cops to civilians. “Seriously though, are the cities in Denmark filled with cops?” The police officers’ gear was modified to look more like real riot police gear.

Dr. Popular placed the scene on the day after Thanksgiving, known as “Black Friday,” one of the biggest shopping days in the U.S. “My hope was to install a piece to get people thinking about recent police violence while they were trying to do their holiday shopping,” he said. Dr. Popular also said that if he had more time he would have made dioramas out of the protest scenes in Oakland and New York City.